Lesson 6: Positive Psychology and Happiness


Attention


Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this lesson's material, students will be able to:

  • Define and explain Happiness, Define and explain Nihilism, Define and explain Hedonism, Define and explain the hedonic treadmill.
  • Understand the history, usefulness and limitations of the medical model.
  • Define key features of wellbeing, life satisfaction, the good life and begin to consider daily interactions with others in a cognitive behavioral and thought, behavior, emotion cycle.
  • Examine psychology as a whole field and key concepts of its historical evolution.
  • Trace the evolution of psychological theory and science's definition of happiness.

Teaching

One cannot catch a falling star; or collect the warm rays of the sun.  There is no way to capture the scent of your love; or bottle the sound of innocence laughing.  Defining happiness would offer the same difficulty.  Happiness is an energy that pervades: "A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted" (George Santayana).

The moments that incite our souls can be extremely different; as are the things that make us laugh or cry.  Happiness is much more potent than joy or contentment.  These states of fluid jubilance or comfortable calm can be components of happiness, but happiness only becomes when it is recognized.  When the mind inhales the moment and that breath cleanses the senses.  Suddenly, we know what happiness is.  We are aware it exists.  This is an alchemical description of happiness.

The elements and/or characteristics of happiness are ever elusive.  Happiness demands something from deep within Self and deep within Other, simultaneously.  Outside events can be catalysts to 'happiness' but this penetrating evocation, happiness, is elicited when the connection of Self and something greater is synthesized into One.  This paradoxical nature of happiness creates a labyrinth of elements. One may cry tears of pain and experience true happiness at the same time, sublime and intellectual Beauty are often provocateurs.  A combination of events, alchemically fused in the Philosopher's Stone, reveals golden sparks of leafs of sorrow laced with understanding, transmogrifying into joy and becoming happiness.

Happiness is not as easy as a funny occasion or lucky fortune.  Happiness is something tenderly avoided, as one's comfort in the negative or neutral seems more entrancing than the awakening of happiness.  Happiness involves an internal aesthetic.  Happiness is the energy that creates internal serenity.  A self-actualized moment of connection with life, breath, psyche, Beauty- Other and One (creating a shared consciousness) sharing the experience of living.  We take in the world through our senses and experiences.  Every day offers a birth, something from which to explore and learn.  Our perceptions filter our preferences and passions.  What we perceive is what becomes.  Projecting this happiness can lead us to prioritizing our choices.  These choices may represent the Aristotelian teleology or a Spiritual knowing.  What we determine becomes our purpose; and our purpose becomes our pursuit.  But, as imperfect humans, socialized imperfectly, 'way leads to way' and we get lost.  Such is life.  Such is the 'pursuit of happiness.'

The pursuit of happiness is a contradiction.  To pursue presumes a chase, an outward action, the hunt for the Grail.  Western culture seems to have taken this declaration of pursuit too literally.  From the first cognition of childhood we are made to understand that some object or opportunity will make us happy.  Psychological texts are abundant with propositions that a child intends to satisfy urges, externalize and objectify internal states and through learning navigates the environment, assigning meaning to certain experiences and developing awareness of the world through the mirrors others hold.

Looking inward, though once and perhaps currently, is the inherent gift of mind; yet, social comparison and idealization or diminution of other occurs in calculations that forgo attention to the heart beat that pulses with the potential for happiness within us. Allowing the innate energy within us to escape provides the kinetic connection that will permit happiness.  Our nature tends to correlate outside events with inside events; and instead of happiness, wholly experienced, we attempt to manipulate our lives to duplicate external circumstances that have historically given us pleasure.  This is a mistake.  Sometimes we see more clearly with our eyes closed.

To attain happiness is not our purpose.  To recognize the ability to realize that we must look with the purity of our senses, in receptivity, is the beginning of experiencing happiness.  The degree to which this is possible is completely individualized and determinable only by the one who is searching for happiness.  

The study of Positive Psychology developed in a rush toward happiness research. A course at Harvard University catapulted Happiness and Positive Psychology into the mainstream and 'the good life' and 'the meaningful life' began to drip into Clinical application. The evaluative importance of positive and meaningful activity became focal and reminded empiricists that 'flow' and 'actualization' are not terms to be dismissed; rather they are states to study and to encourage.

Amplification of strengths, use of positive psychology interventions (PPIs) (e.g. increasing and enhancing optimism, hope, 'savoring,' journaling one's blessings, feeling and expressing gratitude, and exploration and participation on meditations on love and kindness and 'appreciative inquiry' which focuses on pursuits and experiences of joy, hope and purpose) began to permeate the field of psychology in an attempt to induce happiness. Noticing the 'hedonic treadmill' that Western society appeared to be mired within: quest for more, but ever increased achievements, leading to ever increased expectation, resulting in spirals of activity but little growth toward sustained well-being or happiness. Teams of researchers gathered to attempt to understand why compassion, forgiveness and traditionally spiritual acts (e.g. kindness, generosity, and authentic loving toward humanity) resulted in 'happier' individuals.

Often cited in Positive Psychology literature are longitudinal studies: George Vaillant's (2000) analysis of Harvard men and effects of positive affect and later evaluation of health and vitality; Keltner and Harker's (2001) study of 'Duchenne' smiles (thought to be 'genuine' versus scripted or fake smiles) found within photos of the Mills College 1960 yearbook and resultant evaluation of later marriage status and personal life satisfaction; and the 'Nun study' presented by Danner, Snowdon, and Friesen (2001) which analyzed the words within autobiographical sketches of novitiate's vows that reflected longevity, cheerfulness and positive perspectives years later- these studies demonstrate some internal insight that seems predictive of happiness. 

These studies reveal aspects of being that seem to increase happiness, and Positive psychology developed intervention strategies to foster this essence in the life of each individual attempting to achieve this happy sense of satisfaction.  Study reveals that Positive psychology's intervention attributes, when implemented, are significant indicators of 'happiness.' These and other findings support Positive psychology interventions, and advocate for strategies of traditionally spiritual and 'universally' culturally valued and virtue-oriented behaviors as important efforts to implement in daily life in order to experience happiness.

Seligman, co-founder of Positive Psychology as a 'distinct' paradigm, conveys the genesis of this theory in an anecdote told about his young daughter, Nikki, playfully tossing the weeds that Seligman was attempting to tend to from his garden. His daughter was throwing the weeds into the sky, singing and frolicking playfully. Seligman, a self-proclaimed grouch, 'yelled' at his daughter. His daughter thoughtfully replied, as he tells:

Daddy, do you remember before my fifth birthday? From the time I was three to the time I was five, I was a whiner. I whined every day. When I turned five, I decided not to whine anymore. That was the hardest thing I've ever done. And if I can stop whining, you can stop being a grouch (Seligman, 2002, p. 28).

This, Seligman describes was his 'epiphany':

First, I realized that raising Nikki was not about correcting whining. Nikki did that herself. Rather, I realized that raising Nikki is about taking this marvelous strength- I call it 'seeing into the soul,' – amplifying it, nurturing it, helping her lead her life around it to buffer against her weaknesses and the storms of life (http://www.positivepsychology.org/apintro.htm, 2000, p. 2).

Isn't this the role of a counselor? Do we not need to highlight strengths, assist in creating strategies to amplify them, and encourage our clients to nurture those strengths, building their lives in a manner that is conducive to their expressions instead of in a way that reinforces replay of obstacles or challenges? Of course that is what we are to facilitate.

Seligman summarizes that this interaction with his daughter resulted in his analysis of the history of psychology:

Before World War 2, psychology had three distinct missions: curing mental illness, making the lives of all people more productive and fulfilling, and identifying and nurturing high talent…. Right after the war two events- both economic- changed the face of psychology: in 1946 the Veteran's Administration was founded, and thousands of psychologists found out that they could make a living treating mental illness. In 1947, the National Institute of Mental Health (which, in spite of its charter, has always been based on the disease model, and should now more appropriately be renamed the National Institute of Mental Illness) was founded, and academics found out that they could get grants if their research was about pathology…. This arrangement brought many benefits. There have been huge strides in the understanding and therapy for mental illness: at least fourteen disorders, previously intractable, have yielded their secrets to science and can now be either cured or considerably relieved. But the downside was that the other two fundamental missions of psychology- making the lives of all people better and nurturing genius- were all but forgotten (http://www.positivepsychology.org/apintro.htm, 2000, p. 2).
Seligman identifies that within the field of psychology there was a reductive force that created the dynamic of a client as an unimportant aspect, a trend that reduced individuals, and so eliminating or minimizing that important factor of client engagement and active self-healing. Seligman indicates that within therapy there is a "passive foci: 'stimuli' came and elicited 'responses' …. External reinforcements weakened or strengthened responses. Drives tissue needs, instincts, and conflicts from childhood pushed each of us around" (http://www.positivepsychology.org/apintro.htm, 2000, p. 2).

Positive psychology posits that prevention lies not within the pathological model, but in building competencies with systematic attention on the enhancement of positive strengths.  Considering the individual with whom we work as not a passive receptacle and respondent to stimuli, but as a decision maker with agency and self-determination, with the "possibility of becoming masterful, efficacious, or in malignant circumstance, helpless and hopeless" (http://www.positivepsychology.org/apintro.htm, 2000, p. 3, citing studies of Bandura, 1986; Seligman, 1992).

Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, identified as the co-founders of Positive Psychology, began a quest to change the face of psychology:
Our message is to remind our field that psychology is not just the study of pathology, weakness, and damage; it is also the study of strength and virtue. Treatment is not just fixing what is broken; it is nurturing what is best. Psychology is not just a branch of medicine concerned with illness or health; it is much larger. It is about work, education, insight, love, growth, and play (http://www.positivepsychology.org/apintro.htm, 2000, p. 3).

Positive psychology proposes that we improve the human condition, not by highlighting what is wrong, but by bringing into focus not only what is right, where our strengths merge and aligning our lives with events that elicit our strengths, but also with the understanding that our pasts provide us with experience with which we can redefine who we are in a positive light instead of the heavily burdened conjurers of future's fate as diminished. This is not a new creation. "… early investigators, such as William James (1902), Carl Jung (1936/69) Gordon Allport (1961), and Abraham Maslow (1971), were interested in exploring spiritual ecstasy, play, creativity, and peak experiences" (http://www.positivepsychology.org/apintro.htm, 2000, p. 6).

Here is a 'new' field recapitulating the force of one hundred years of 'scientific' thinking regarding spirituality and becoming whole and fully authentic, engaging in peak and flow experiences, and highlighting the positive potential within each of us.

The Millennial edition of The American Psychologist (2000) focused on Positive Psychology and released the edition which was comprised of an introduction, by Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, with sixteen accompanying articles of research in the burgeoning field. The introduction, in addition to disclosing Seligman's 'epiphany' also reveals Csikszentmihalyi's perceptions regarding his reasoning and genesis of his collaborative efforts with Seligman to create Positive Psychology. He, too, cites his experiences regarding World War 2, and his European perspective offers the possibility that experiences can transcend culture, be universal, and exist as generalizable.

I witnessed the dissolution of the smug world in which I had been comfortably ensconced: I noticed with surprise how many of the adults I had known as successful and self-confident became helpless and dispirited once the war removed their social supports. Without jobs, money or status they were reduced to empty shells. Yet there were a few who kept their integrity and purpose despite the surrounding chaos. Their serenity was a beacon that kept others from losing hope. And these were not the men and women one would have expected to emerge unscathed: they were not necessarily the most respected, better educated, or more skilled individuals. This experience set me thinking: What sources of strength were these people drawing on? (www.positivepsychology.org/apintro.htm, 2000, p. 2)

After reading the sixteen articles in the Millennial Edition of the American Psychologist (2000), I took copious notes and internalized a great deal of the truths offered. There were some less than convincing insinuations and I invite everyone to read the articles. Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi are more succinct in summarizing the articles in their introduction of the edition. Their summary of some key points to articles particularly pertinent, in this writer's estimation, are listed below:

Peterson (2000) writes specifically of optimism as "involving cognitive, emotional, and motivational components" (www.positivepsychology.org/apintro.htm, 2000, p. 5).  Optimism, hope, and future-minded positivity seem to be related to people having "better moods, to be more persevering and successful, and to experience better physical health" (p. 5).

David Myers (2000) summarizes that there are high correlative factors "between religious faith and happiness" and among the people who score high on Subjective Well Being indices, and "economic growth and income… and close personal relationships…" (www.positivepsychology.org/apintro.htm, 2000, p. 5).

Richard Ryan and Edward Deci (2000) also present findings on another highly correlated and suggestive topic in the fields of happiness theory and positive psychology. "Self determination theory investigates three related human needs: for competence, for belongingness, and for autonomy" (www.positivepsychology.org/apintro.htm, 2000, p. 5). These concepts are related to core components of Humanistic Psychology.

Through the literature it has been summarized that there, historically, have been three tiers in traditional psychology.  These tiers of psychological study have been cited as Humanistic, Clinical, and Behaviorism (www.positivepsychology.org/apintro.htm, 2000, p. 3). From these historically identified tiers come the hundreds of paradigms and modalities available to practitioners. It is certainly debatable that these are the only tiers, as structuralism and functionalism were foundational lenses with which to view psychology.

Positive psychology attempts to synthesize and compress the vital components of many of these approaches in order to foster the promotion of mental health and thriving.

 

 

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Assessment

Lesson 6 Activity

As described on page 111, Set aside a free day this month: Create for yourself a Beautiful day. Use as many techniques as the book and these resources have described. "Do not let the bustle of life interfere, and carry out the plan" (p.111).

This activity will not be graded, but I would like you to post to the discussion board the result of the day. Were you able to do this? What happened?

Lesson 6 Discussion A

Summarize your learning regarding enhancing pleasures, savoring, mindfulness, gratitudes, flow and how these aspects of being can be incorporated into any person's daily life. This should include vocabulary and academic information in a more formal manner.

Lesson 6 Discussion B

After watching the TEDTalks and completing the meditation, reviewing the resources, and completing the reading use specific examples from these resources to summarize your learning regarding this chapter. This should be less formal.

Lesson 6 Discussion C

Discuss your Beautiful Day assignment. What were barriers? What were benefits? Could you carry it out? Why or why not? Why should you implement this practice in your life?

Remember, you mist post TWICE in EVERY discussion board. Your first post should address the topic of the discussion (like the one above) and your second post must be a reply to ANOTHER students' post...your reply should be MORE than just a "I agree!" or "Very cool!" It should be "substantive" by expanding on the students post, asking a questions, adding your own thoughts to what they have said, etc.